Did you know?

“20 percent of customers at a given company are the source of 80 percent of the company’s profits.”

You probably did and it may be that way at your company. Losing one of those 20 percent accounts can really hurt.

“Recruiting new customers costs five times as much as retaining current customers.”

“It is 16 times as costly to build a long-term business relationship with a new customer than simply to cultivate the loyalty of an existing customer.”

“The average customer spends 67 percent more in his or her third year as a customer of your business than in the first year.”

“Despite the importance of customer retention, less than a third of business executives consider it a priority.” (statistics courtesy of Annex Cloud)

Why is that?

Customer Loyalty

We all know customer retention is important but you and I both know that most companies are not doing a great job of it. Losing customers out the back door faster than you can bring new ones in the front, doesn’t do anyone any good.

We need to retain our customers and to do that today, it’s more than just satisfaction. We need to do the work to earn their loyalty.

(For more great stats on customer success check out this post by Groove.)

Whose Job is it Anyway?

So, you close a deal, what’s next? Traditionally it was the salesperson’s job to land new accounts and keep them. Some sales executives still have account management along with landing new customers. Today, most organizations have separated the jobs and have salespeople looking for new business and account managers working with existing accounts to grow them. Some companies also have customer support people to assist customers. More recently, companies have started to have Customer Success departments. With all these people concerned about the customers, we should be able to retain them.

And if you don’t have time and want to get your questions answered directly, schedule a Customers for Life Strategy Session with me. Just follow this link, it’s that easy.

Alice Heiman has been helping companies increase sales for more than 20 years. Her innovative sales leadership programs, coupled with her top-down approach to creating long-term change, set up sales leaders and sales-managing business owners to get consistent and sustainable growth.

Agreed, this is a great post. Alice, I really like the 4 fundamentals to customer retention. I start with an even broader premise that companies need to know their customers and get closer to the way they experience your brand and company. But once the time comes to take action on this intelligence, I like that frame of Wow, Love, Sell, and Develop. In a best case scenario, the Love and the Sell can kind of blend together. Cheers.